WEB TERMS AND DEFINITIONS GLOSSARY
We try to keep it simple, here are
some main terms, not everything
| Accesses | Document access, page access, site access, file access |
| ADSL or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line | A DSL line where the upload speed is different from the download speed. usually the download speed is much greater. |
| Adware | Adware, or advertising-supported software, is any software application in which advertisements are displayed while the program is running. These applications include additional code that displays the ads in pop-up windows or through a bar that appears on a computer screen. |
| All the Web | FAST, One of the fastest and most comprehensive of the search engines, but sadly used by only a very small fraction of searchers. This excellent resource is now bought out and used by Lycos a an internet resource |
| alt tags | Image tags |
| Alta Vista | A search engine which has declined in terms of percentage of the total search market over the past decade, but now seems to have stabilized and perhaps increased its share in certain regions of the world. It incorporates a paid express submission program called InfoSpider |
| Applet | A small Java program that can be embedded in an HTML page. It differs from full-fledged Java applications in that cannot access certain resources on the local computer; and is prohibited from communicating with most other computers across a network. The common rule is that an applet can only make an internet connection to the computer from which the applet was sent. |
| ASCII or American Standard Code for Information Interchange | This is the world-wide standard for the code numbers used by computers to represent all the upper and lower-case Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. There are 128 standard ASCII codes each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number: 0000000 through 1111111. |
| Ask Jeeves | A clever variant on the search engine, where questions are answered rather than search terms. Ask gets its data from a variety of sources including paid directories, paid submissions and other search engines, and it seems to be growing in popularity in the uk, partly as a result of successful advertising campaigns in the media |
| ASP | Active Server Pages, or Application Service Provider. A dynamically created Web page with a .ASP extension that utilizes ActiveX scripting. When a browser requests an ASP page, the Web server generates a page with HTML code and sends it back to the browser. ASP pages are similar to CGI scripts |
| Backbone | A high speed line or series of connections that forms a major pathway within a network. |
| Bandwidth | Usually measured in bits-per-second, this is basically a description of how much data can be sent through a connection in unit time. Fast modems can move about 57,000 bits in one second. ISDN lines permit faster speeds, and Broadband access provides by far the fastest. |
| Banner exchange or Link exchange | See reciprocal links |
| Blog | From "web log". A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. Updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." |
| Body text | Actual text which is normally visible upon a webpage, as opposed to the images of text. Many site designers use images of text because it is easier to position and control on the page, especially for items such as navigation buttons. Search engine robots cannot read this images of text, and consequently do not register the important keywords that it may contain. |
| Bounce Rate | How many customers are bouncing away from your website to a different site |
| Browser | A Client software program that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources. e.g. Internet explorer, Netscape Navigator |
| Browser Hijacker | The alteration of the default browser starting page, search page, or favorites page to another webpage without permission. |
| Cache | A cache temporarily stores web pages visited in the computer memory. A copy of documents retrieved is stored in cache. When you revisit a document by going, FORWARD, BACK, your Browser first checks to see if it is in cache and will retrieve it from there because it is much faster. Cache settings can be customized. |
| Certificate Authority | An issuer of security certificates used in SSL connections. |
| CGI or Common Gateway Interface | cgi scripts, stored in cgi-bin The most common way Web programs interact dynamically with users. Many search boxes, mail forms and other applications that record or fetch data from a website rely on CGI scripts to process the data once it's submitted and to pass it to a background program such as Javascript, or Perl. |
| cgi-bin | The most common name of a directory on a web server in which CGI scripts and programs are stored. |
| Client | A software program that is used to contact and obtain data from a server software program on another computer. A web browser is a specific kind of Client. |
| Co-location | Having a server that belongs to one person or group physically located on an Internet-connected network belonging to other persons. Usually this is done because the server owner wants their machine to be on a high-speed Internet connection and doesn't want the security risks of having the server on his own network. |
| Competing web pages | All other web pages which are registered with a search engine for using the same search term |
| Cookie | A piece of information sent by a web server to a web browser. The browser software is expected to save this and to send it back to the server whenever the browser makes additional requests from the Server. |
| Corporate websites | Websites representing companies of a significant size or importance. These are often large, multi-sectioned sites which provide information about the corporation's structure, services and products |
| Database Support | Support provided by a server for server based database programs examples are SQL and MySQL |
| Dedicated server | A dedicated server is a single computer in a network reserved for serving the needs of the network. For example, some networks require that one computer be set aside to manage communications between all the other computers. |
| Default, home or index page | In the Web hosting business, a dedicated server is typically a rented service. The user rents the server, software and an Internet connection from the Web host |
| Description | A form of Meta content in the Head of the page and not visible when viewed in a browser window. Search engine robots and meta crawlers may register these comments and use them when they list the page in their databases |
| Design packages | Specially grouped design services often linked to other services such as domain hosting or web site promotion. |
| Directories | Internet databases listing websites or pages according to category. Varieties include, regional, global, paid inclusion, specialist, paid review, sponsored, paid submission and pay-per-click through. |
| DNS or Domain Name System | Because the Internet is based on IP addresses, not domain names, every Web server requires a Domain Name System (DNS) server to translate domain names into IP addresses. |
| Dogpile | A meta-search engine, providing results from several other engines |
| Domain Name | The unique name that identifies the address of Internet site. Domain Names are composed of two or more parts separated by dots. The first part is the most specific, and the second part is an extension relating to either a country code and /or the category of the domain .eg .de (germany) or .co.uk (uk company) or ac.uk(academic institution in uk) or .com. |
| Domain name registration | To prevent repetition of domain names, all domain names must be registered. Originally there was only one register, but there are now many registers worldwide which record domain names and the name of their Domain Name Servers. |
| Domains | Hierarchical scheme for indicating logical and sometimes geographical venue of a web-page from the network. |
| Doorway pages or hallways | pages specifically designed to attract internet traffic to a website, and, more specifically, to a page which may mot be particularly attractive to search engines because of the nature of its design or structure. |
| Download | Transferring data from one computer to another computer which you are using. The opposite of uploading |
| ebusiness or e-business | Electronic business. Business where ordering and payment are conducted electronically. Particularly useful for dealings over the www |
| Ecommerce or e-marketing | Conducting business on-line. This includes buying and selling products with digital cash and via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). |
| Ecommerce websites | Sites where business can be conducted electronically. |
| Email accounts | Email is short for electronic mail, the transmission of messages over communications networks. Sent messages are stored in electronic mailboxes until the recipient fetches them. All online services and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer e-mail accounts, a method whereby account holders can identify themselves to send or receive messages. |
| Email campaigns | Advertising campaigns conducted though multiple or bulk email lists. These can be "targeted" or "opt-in" to increase the selectivity of the recipient. |
| e-marketing | See ecommerce |
| Express reviews | Some search engines and directories may take up to 6 months to spider a website. A way of speeding up this process, and more particularly, a means of monetary gain for the directory concerned, is to pay it to review the site quickly. Some directories will only accept new submissions in this way. |
| Extranet | An intranet that is accessible to computers outside of a companys' own private network, but that is not accessible to the general public. A system that allows clients and business partners to access a company web site. |
| Filename | The name of the file. It is composed of a identifiable alphanumerical component and a file extension |
| Filename extension | A tag of usually three letters which identifies the format of the file, so that programs will recognize it and be able to open it. E.g. ".doc" a document file |
| Flash | A bandwidth friendly and browser independent vector-graphic animation technology. With Flash, users can draw their own animations or import other vector-based images. Now owned and supplied by Macromedia. |
| Frames | A feature supported by most modern web browsers enabling the author to divide the browser display area into two or more sections known as frames. The frame contents are delivered from a different web page. Frames provide speed and consistency in designing webpages, as items such as navigation bars and header bars can be repeated on each page, but they are the bane of web promoters as they are supported unevenly by search engine browsers, anf their meta content is often not recorded. |
| FrontPage or MS FrontPage | Microsoft FrontPage, a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. A software program for creating and managing Web pages. Extensions are required on the server if the interactive parts of the pages designed in FrontPage (e.g. form mail) are to work |
| FrontPage Extensions | (see above) |
| FTP or File Transfer Protocol | A very common and fast method of moving files between two Internet sites |
| Gigabyte or Gbyte | 1000 Megabytes or 1,024,000 Kilobytes |
| Google AdWords | A form of pay per click through operated by Google as a way to create income without compromising their unique ranking system of web pages for keyword relevance. Keyword advertising can be purchased similarly to Overture ppc, but the paid links appear on the RHS if the search pages, separate from the ranked list of web pages. |
| Hallway pages | Pages specifically designed to attract internet traffic to a website, leading to a diversity of pages where the default page may not be registered or unreadable by search engine robots due to the nature of its design or structure incorporating flash intros with no text. |
| Headings | HTML codes giving extra style prominence to certain words and denoted by <H></H> set around the particular piece of text |
| Hit or Traffic | In internet terms a hit means a single request from a web browser for a single item from a web server. Consequently, for a web browser to display a page that contains 4 graphics there would be 5 hits: One for the HTML page, and one for each of the four graphics |
| Home Page | Originally, the web page that a browser is set to use when it starts up. Now the most common meaning refers to the main web page for a website, also called the index page or default page. |
| Host | Any computer on a network that is a repository for services available to other computers on the network such as SMTP for email and HTTP for web |
| Hosting | The provision of services to other computers on a network. More commonly the provision services and of space on a server for a website to function. |
| Hotbot | Now incorporated in Lycos and FAST All the Web |
| HTML or HyperText Markup Language | The language code used to create Hypertext documents for use on the internet. |
| HTTP or HyperText Transfer Protocol | The protocol for moving hypertextfiles across the Internet. Requires an HTTP client program on one end, and an HTTP server program on the other.. HTTP is the most important protocol used in the World Wide Web |
| Hypertext links | Any text that contains links to other documents, or words or phrases in the document. The link can be clicked on by a reader and will lead to another document being retrieved and displayed |
| Image tags or alt tags | A means of describing an image. Originally for text only browsers to tell the recipient what would normally be visible if the browser could reproduce images. Now it is a means of emphasizing an image or keywords. These words usually pop up when the image is moused-over. |
| Index page | The default or home page of a website, to which a browser is sent initially when requesting a site url |
| Infospider | See Alta Vista |
| Inktomi | The major search engine to rely upon meta tags for its ranking methodology |
| Interactive opt-in direct emailing | A system whereby a visitor to a site can actively opt to receive future emails usually via a mailing list. This helps the sender because he knows that the email is going to someone who is likely to want to receive it, and it avoids spam |
| Internet | The vast collection of inter-connected networks connected by TCP/IP protocols, connecting millions of independent networks into a vast global internet. |
| Internet marketing | Any form of or part of marketing conducted wholly on the internet. This may or may not include electronic transactions |
| Internet search terms | See keyword, key phrases |
| Internet traffic | In website terms, this is the volume of requests for files and documents. Most frequently measured in hits, accesses, visits in unit time. The total volume and size of files scan also be included in this measurement to provide an estimate of bandwidth required to sustain effective functioning of the site. |
| Intranet | A private network inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that are used on the Internet, but only for internal use. Compare internet/ extranet |
| IP Number or Internet Protocol Number | A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots; e.g. 212.67.202.99 |
| ISP or Internet Service Provider | An organization providing access to the Internet. |
| JavaScript | A programming language that is mainly for web pages, enabling interactivity. It can be included in an HTML files relying upon the browser to interpret the Script. Where JavaScript is combined with Cascading Style Sheets(CSS), and later versions of HTML (4.0+) the result is often known as DHTML |
| JPEG or Joint Photographic Experts Group | One of the most common formats for image files, in particular photographic files. File extensions end with .jpg or .jpeg |
| Key phrases or search terms | Phrases used by a search engine to identify relevant web pages. |
| Keyword or search term | A word used by a search engine in its search for relevant Web pages. |
| Keyword densities | The proportion of the text which is keyword.(e.g.: if a keyword appears five times on a page of fifty words, it's density will be 10%) |
| Keyword prominence | Emphasis given to keywords in an attempt to get search engines to rank the page higher for those terms. This can be done by including them in headings, larger fonts, linked text, image tags or at the beginning of sentences and paragraphs |
| Keyword relevance | Meta tags in the <HEAD> of a web page can contain keywords to tell search engines about the content of the page. Many engines now read the actual content rather than the meta tags, and where the tags are not relevant to the content of the page, the engine may consider it to be an attempt to fool it, and consequently remove the page from their lists. |
| Keyword research | Study of who searches for what on the internet, and which are the most frequent keywords used in these searches (keyword popularity)Also includes a study of how many other sites are registered with search engines for these search terms |
| Keyword searches | Enquiries made to Search Engines and Directories for relevant documents |
| Keyword selection | A group of keywords chosen to be the most effective in terms of attracting relevant traffic to a webpage or site. The page can then be optimized for these terms by giving them emphasis, and perhaps increasing the frequency or density in the text of the page. Alternatively, they can be used as the basis of a pay per click strategy to deliver quick and relevant traffic. |
| LAN or Local Area Network | A computer network limited to within a particular location. |
| Link | Generally any form of hypertext link. Can be within the web page, within the site or an external link to another website |
| Link popularity | The number of external sites which carry a link to the website. |
| Linux | A widely used UNIX-like operating system. |
| Log file | A far as websites are concerned, this refers to the files which web servers maintain listing every request made for data. |
| log file analysis | Using software log files can be analyzed to find out where visitors are coming from, how often they return, and how they navigate through a site. Cookies enable the recall of even more detailed information about how individual users are accessing a site and which engine has referred them, for which search terms etc |
| LookSmart Directory | Once a searchable directory offering free listings, it first changed to a paid submission directory, and now operates on a pay per click through basis |
| Lycos | A major UK search engine and directory, which also accepts paid submission through Site Submit |
| Mailing list | A system that allows people to send e-mail to one address, whereupon their message is copied and sent to all of the other subscribers to the list, enabling people with many different kinds of e-mail access to participate in discussions together |
| Malware | Malware, "malicious software", is software developed for the purpose of doing harm. It can be classified based on how they get executed, how they spread, and/or what they do. The classification is not perfect, however, in the sense that the groups often overlap and the difference is often not obvious. |
| Megabyte | A million bytes. More exactly 1024 kilobytes |
| meta content | The content included within the meta tag, or a definition of the type of meta tag |
| meta tag or metatag | In HTML or XML, a tag used in the <head> of a page to provide information about the page. There may be multiple meta tags in a header, each with different information. In current usage, each tag includes the name of the information and the content that supports that name. As an example, here is an author meta tag: <meta name="author" content="Walt Howe"> .Other commonly used meta tag names are description, keywords, date, and copyright. |
| Metacrawler | A meta-search engine, providing results from several other engines |
| metacrawlers | Search engine robots which trawl the internet collecting details of web pages and other search engines and directories based upon their meta content |
| META-SEARCH ENGINE | Search engines that automatically submit your keyword search to several other search tools, and retrieve results from all their databases. |
| Mirror Site | Mirror sites are web sites or FTP sites that maintain exact copies of material originated at another location. Useful for providing more widespread access to a resource. E.g. download libraries in different countries. |
| Modem or Modulator DEModulator | A device that connects a computer to a phone line allowing a computer to talk to other computers through the phone system. |
| MSN search | Microsoft's own search database in a directory format, listing pages by category, but with a search facility also |
| MySQL | An open source relational database management system that relies on SQL for processing the data in the database. It provides APIs for the scripting languages C, C++, Eiffel, Java, Perl, PHP and Python, and it is most commonly used for web applications and for embedded applications A popular alternative to proprietary database systems due to its speed and reliability. MySQL can run on UNIX, Windows and Mac OS |
| Netscape Directory | Directory which gets its information form various sources including the Open Directory Project |
| Network | Two or more computers connected together so that they can share resources. Connect two or more networks together and you have an internet |
| Newsgroup | A discussion group on USENET |
| NIC or Network Information Center | Any office that handles information for a network. e.g. the InterNIC, where most new domain names were registered until the process was decentralized to private companies. |
| Node | Any individual computer connected to a network with a unique network address |
| Nominet | The registry for .uk domain names |
| Open Directory | The larges, but perhaps least used global Internet Directory. Its database is used by virtually all the other directories as a source of website urls. It has been said that unless a site is registered with Open, Google will not register it on its own pages |
| opt-in or opt in mailing list | A list of subscribers to a mailing list |
| Overture | Internet search engine which enables websites to bid for keywords and ranks them according to how much they are willing to pay. Overture also has agreements with other engines and directories permitting them to list their top three sites as sponsored listings at the top of other engines' lists. |
| Page registrations | The acceptance of a page url into the lists of a search engine or directory |
| Page titles, document titles | This is what appears in the top bar of the browser window when you display the document and it is the title that appears in search engine results. It is recorded as a <TITLE field > or <Meta Title > field in the head of the document. The text of this meta title field may or may not also occur in the visible body of the document. |
| Paid inclusions | Some search engines and directories will only accept new listings if the site owner is willing to pay for them. This generally means that the rankings in the directory tend to be less effectively researched in terms of relevance, and the subsequent service tends to be poorer than those which are basing their content purely upon relevance and ease of navigation |
| Paid submissions | Some search engines and directories may take up to 6 months to spider a website. A way of speeding up this process, and more particularly, a means of monetary gain for the directory concerned, is to pay it to review the site quickly. |
| Pay for review directory | Similar to paid submission, but here the directory presents certain sponsored reviews at the top of its listings |
| pay per click or ppc | Also pay per click through. Keywords can be bought from certain internet search databases, whereby the more you pay for a keyword the higher up the list your site will be in searches for that term. Effective if you need an immediate result, or if there is little or no competition for the keyword in question. Very expensive if the competition is keen. An advantage can be that resulting traffic can be extremely select depending upon the relevance and specificity of the keyword. |
| pay-per-bid | A system of bidding for pay per click keywords |
| PHP or Hypertext Preprocessor | An open source, server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. In an HTML document, PHP scripts enclosed within special PHP tags enabling the author to jump between HTML and PHP, similar to active server pages. PHP is executed on the server, so the client cannot view the code. It can perform any task that a CGI program can do. Its strength lies in its compatibility with many types of databases. |
| Ping | Check if a server is running. |
| Platform | The underlying hardware or software for a system. such as UNIX machines on an Ethernet network. Often synonymous with operating system. The platform defines a standard around which a system can be developed. "Cross-platform" refers to applications, formats, or devices that work on different platforms. |
| Plug-in | An application built into a browser or added to a browser to enable it to interact with a special file type eg as a movie, sound file |
| PNG or Portable Network Graphics | A graphics format specifically designed for use on the internet. It enables compression of images without any loss of quality, including high-resolution images. It is license free |
| POP or Post Office Protocol /Point of Presence | Post Office Protocol refers to a way that e-mail client software such as Outlook Express gets mail from a mail server. When an Internet Service Provider (ISP) provides an email account it is normally supplied with a POP account. |
| Pop-ups | A pop-up can mean several
things: 1. A pop-up is a window which appears on screen in response to some command or program. Examples of useful popups are help files and information files which "pop up" over an existing screen in response to hot-key or mouse-over requests. 2. Pop-ups are also drop-down menus which appear on web pages. 3. More undesirable are the Pop-up Adverts. These are programmed to appear automatically whenever actively browsing certain pages on the internet, or locally whenever an Internet browser such as IE6 is being used. This is a form of Spam, and is undesirable because it prevents the viewer reading the web page originally selected. They are employed by browser hijacking pages because they often derive an income from click through or numbers of impressions. |
| Portal | A marketing term meaning a web site that is designed as a first page which people see when using the Web. This leads to a series of other sites often hosted on the same server system. A Portal Site provides a directory access to many others and often incorporates a search engine. It usually offers free email and other services to entice people to use the site as their main access point, and relies upon advertising and hosting for its income. |
| PPC | See pay per click |
| Proxy Server | A proxy server sits in between a client and the "real" server that a client is trying to use. Client's may be configured to use a proxy server; usually an HTTP server. The clients makes all of it's requests from the Proxy Server; which then makes requests from the "real" server and passes the result back to the Client. Proxy servers can cache results and give the stored result instead of making a new one. Proxy servers are commonly used on LANs |
| Ranking | In search engine terms, this is the positioning of web pages in a league table for relevancy and usefulness when related to a particular search term. |
| RDMS or Relational Database Management System | A database management system that stores data in the form of related tables. Relational databases are powerful because they require few assumptions about how data is related or how it will be extracted from the database. As a result, the same database can be viewed in many different ways. |
| Reciprocal links, link reciprocation, link exchange | The system whereby separate websites agree to promote each other by providing a link to the other's site on their own web page. An extension of this is a Banner Exchange, which is just a pictorial form of link exchange. |
| Referring search engines or referrers | The search site which has sent a visitor to a particular page. In other words, how the visitor found your site. This data can be stored in the log files. |
| Regional engines / directories | Engines and directories which specifically list pages and sites from their own geographical domain e.g. Fireball and Web DE only from Germany, WebWomb at principally Australian domains, liberio Italy. /td> |
| Robot or spider | See metacrawler |
| RSS or Really Simple Syndication | A Web content syndication format. RSS is dialect of XML. All RSS files must conform to the XML 1.0 specification, as published on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website. |
| Script | A batch file or Macro. A list of commands that can be executed without user interaction. A script language is a simple programming language. |
| Search driven traffic | Website traffic which originates from an internet search |
| Search engine | A database system for searching the information available on the Web. |
| SEO or Search engine optimization | The optimization of web pages or the whole website so that it achieves high rankings for important key terms with specific search engines. |
| Search engine submission | See url submission |
| Secure server | A web server that supports any of the major security protocols that encrypt and decrypt messages to protect them against third party tampering. Making purchases from a secure Web server ensures that a user's payment or personal information can be translated into a secret code that's difficult to crack. Major security protocols include SSL, SHTTP, PCT, and IPSec. |
| Secure sites | A website that is based on a secure server |
| Security Certificate | A identity data often stored as a text file that is used by the SSL protocol to establish a secure connection |
| Server Side | Something happening on the server computer, as opposed to the client or local computer. Usually it is a program or other application producing interactivity such as dynamic pages or animation. |
| Servers | Computers, or software packages, that provide a specific service to client software running on other computers. The term can refer to a particular piece of software; such as an internet server; or to the machine on which the software is running: e.g. "No emails received because the mail-server is currently down" |
| Shared hosting | Where more than one website is hosted on the same server |
| SHTML | An file name extension (.shtml) that identifies web pages containing SSI commands. |
| Site architecture or Site structure | The overall structure of the website including site plan, how the pages interrelate, how they are composed (e.g. frames, layers, or table construction) and navigation links |
| Site Submit | See Lycos |
| Spam, Spamming, spam indexing | An inappropriate attempt to use a mailing list, or other networked communications facility as a broadcast medium (which it is not) by sending the same message to a large number of people who did not request it. Can also mean an attempt to fool search engine spiders into ranking web pages higher than they would normally be, by the over use of various keywords, or misleading meta content, or repeated resubmissions(Spam indexing) |
| Specialist directories | Directories which only list information of a specific nature: e.g. medical directories, scientific component manufacturers, booksellers |
| Spider or Webcrawler | A search engine program which enables the examination of internet files by following hypertext links. When visiting a website they often look for a robots.txt file in the root directory which will tell them which areas of the site are to be spidered. |
| Spyware | Spyware are unethical programs that covertly gather user information through an internet connection without the user's knowledge. This is usually done for advertising purposes. When installed on a local computer, the spyware software monitors user activity on the Internet and transmits this information to someone else without the user's knowledge. |
| SQL or Structured Query Language | A specialized language for sending queries to databases. Many database applications can be addressed using SQL. Each specific application has its own slightly different version implementing features unique to that application; but all SQL-capable databases support a common subset of SQL. also see MySQL |
| SSI or Server Side Inclusion | A type of HTML instruction telling a computer that serves Web pages to dynamically generate data. Used especially in database searches. |
| SSL or Secure Socket Layer | A protocol designed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet. |
| Submission strategies | A planned campaign to submit certain web pages to certain search engines at certain frequencies |
| Targeted email or Targeted lists | Mailing list recipients made up of certain demographic, age or lifestyle groups, most likely to be interested in the subject matter of the email message. These lists may be bought, or be directly recruited from opt-in individuals visiting a site. It is far more efficient then general emailing and causes less irritation to the recipients. |
| TCP/IP or Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol | This is the suite of protocols that defines the Internet. TCP/IP software is included with every major kind of computer operating system. To cope the internet; your computer must have TCP/IP software |
| Telnet | The command and program used to login from one Internet site to another. The telnet command and program leads to the login: prompt of a second host |
| Unique visitor | A person who visits a Web site more than once within a specified time period. Log file analysis software can distinguish between visitors who only visit the site once and unique visitors who return to the site. Unique visitors are measured according to their unique IP addresses, and are counted only once no matter how many times they visit the site. Some ISPs that use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol may allocate different IPs for every file requested, and in this case each single IP address does not indicate a unique visitor. |
| UNIX | A computer operating system. A multi-user system with built-in TCP/IP. It is one of the most common operating system for internet servers |
| Upload | The transfer of files, data or documents from a the computer you are using to another computer. The opposite of download |
| URL or Uniform Resource Locator | An address used to locate files using http and some other protocols such as telnet. Particularly pertinent to the internet. The address usually takes the form of the domain Name or IP address, the file or document name, and the directory in which it resides on the server. e.g. www.domainname/directory/filename |
| URL registration | The inclusion of a url in the database listings of a search engine or directory |
| URL submission | The submission of the url to a search engine or directory for inclusion in its database |
| Usage statistics | An analysis of website log files to produce useful statistics about how the site is being used, by whom and by what systems |
| USENET | A world-wide system of discussion groups, with comments passed among hundreds of thousands of machines. Not entirely exclusive to the Internet. USENET provides discussion areas, called newsgroups |
| Viewing trends | Changes in popularity and interest in particular subject matter. |
| Viral marketing | A means of rapid dissemination of news about a service or product, brought about by attracting visitors to a site with some free offer and getting the visitor to recommend other visitors to come to the site |
| Viral web pages | Pages created for a viral marketing campaign, whereby the visitor can either directly email friends or associates to visit the site, or can provide a list of those who they think would like to visit. |
| Virtual hosting | A provider of web services including server functions and internet connection services. Frequently used where the customers don't want to purchase and maintain their own servers and connections. A virtual host usually provides domain name registration, e-mail services etc and file storage and directory services for the website files. A disadvantage can be that as the services are shared with others, there is a danger that the server may go down due to something illegal on another website, and also service may be slowed if there is too much competition for the resource |
| Visit or Traffic | The time spent by a visitor while logged on to a website while requesting various files (accesses), on various pages (page hits). Each time the visitor leaves the site and returns, it is a separate visit. - but see unique visitors |
| Visitors or Traffic | A visitor to a website, someone whose browser requests a file form a website |
| Web presence or Internet presence | The overall find ability of a website on the internet. This is measured in how it is ranked by engines and directories for those search terms most relevant to the site, and also to how many other sites link to the particular web site |
| Web or Website promotion | General term relating to increasing the visibility or find ability of a website. It embraces page optimization, search engine submission, email awareness campaigns, extranet advertising, reciprocating links |
| Web site management | Overall management of a website. Includes ensuring that the pages and links are active, forms and related email accounts are working, server is functioning correctly, monitoring traffic, updating page content, search engine registrations etc |
| Web site monitoring | Regular checking to ensure correct functioning of the website, and compiling details about visiting traffic |
| Web traffic | See internet traffic |
| Webpage positioning | The numerical ranking achieved in the search engine lists by web pages for particular search terms |
| Website design | A general term to describe everything visible on the pages of a website, and includes navigation, site architecture, page structure, positioning of text and image and the use of multimedia |
| Website evaluation | An appraisal of a website's ability or potential ability to deliver the required service that it is desired to do. This takes into account market research, www competition, and website structure and design |
| Website navigation | The ability to find and move from one page to another. |
| Website optimization | A strategy to ensure that each page on the website is optimized for different keywords or for different search engines, so that no page is competing with another on the site, and all are performing a separate service and promotional function. |
| Web Templates | Website templates, flash templates and other products are a pre-developed page layout in electronic media used to make new pages with a similar design, pattern, or style. |
| Windows 2000 or W2K | An operating system created by Microsoft |
| WWW or world wide web | World Wide Web a term frequently used when referring to "The Internet";Loosely used it refers to the whole constellation of resources that can be accessed using Gopher; FTP; HTTP;telnet; USENET; WAIS other tools |
| XHTML | Extensible Hypertext Markup Language: A variant of HTML that is a hybrid between HTML and XML, and is more universally acceptable in Web pages and search engines than XML |
| XML or eXtensible Markup Language | A system used for defining data formats. XML provides a very rich system for defining complex documents and databases such as invoices, glossaries, inventories etc |
| Yahoo | Perhaps the most used and conceivably the most gargantuan web directory. Yahoo has two main sources for searches. Yahoo Web Pages which lists pages like a search engine and gets its sources form Google. This is a useful resource. Secondly, Yahoo Directory accepts Paid submissions and is so unwieldy that all but the most innocent web tyros avoid it. The main reason for its success is that it is used as a major portal for many ISP services, and consequently new internet users believe that this is the only search source available. |
